Some vehicles include speech recognition systems capable of accepting commands from a user via speech. Such commands may be referred to as “voice commands.” As used herein, the term “user” means a single person or a group of persons. A speech recognition system recognizes the user's spoken words and converts the user's spoken words into electrical input signals to control an application system of the vehicle. In this disclosure, the term “application system” means a system of the vehicle capable of receiving commands from the speech recognition system in order to perform a particular task. As non-limiting examples, an application system may be a navigation system, radio system, phone system, telematics system, Internet apps (e.g., PANDORA or FACEBOOK), and media system. In this disclosure, the term “telematics system” means a system that integrates the use of telecommunications and informatics.
As discussed above, a speech recognition system can command an application system to perform a task in response to a voice command. As used herein, the term “task” means an operation performed by an application system of the vehicle in response to a command from the speech recognition system. As non-limiting examples, the tasks may include initiating a phone call via a phone system, adjusting a volume of a radio system, and suggesting directions to a particular destination via a navigation system. It is useful to control a speech recognition system to enhance its performance when a user provides voice commands.